Monday, March 31, 2014

Neither Montini nor MacEachern were on board with this story back when The Republic was first groping around trying to decide if it was in the paper’s interests to pursue leads from mere bloggers trying to get bigger fish to notice. This correspondent passed along a request from a reporter for The Republic to speak with whistleblowers back on January 4, 2011, when that solicitation was received based on exclusive early reporting in this column and at the Sipsey Street Irregulars blog:

"I'm interested in the recent blogs in which you indicated that ATF ‘walked’ several hundred AKs and ARs across the border, including one that may have been used to kill Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry," we were informed by the paper. "If you have information or a source that you'd be willing to share, I'm very interested."

This was common in those early days, with “real reporters” wanting us to give up our sources without earning them, including a self-entitled CNN producer who almost got hung up on with his airs that he was doing us a favor by talking with us and expecting us to turn everything over to him so that he could decide if it was worth any more if his precious time. It was also a month and a half before we were initially approached by CBS News (on February 16, 2011) with a similar request a week before they aired the first in a series of reports on February 23.

The attitude was typified by Michael Isikoff who basically said, "okay, the professionals are here now. You give us your sources and we'll figure out where you're lying." Even so, we passed his contact request done the email chain and one whistleblower said in response, "Don't send me anything from that arrogant prick again." (Some expletives deleted.)

On March 19, the Alabama Senate passed a bill that would allow gun owners to carry a loaded pistol in their vehicle without a permit.

The bill (SB 354) was introduced by pro-gun Senator Scott Beason (R-Gardendale), who introduced the bill at the request of a local grassroots gun rights group, BamaCarry, Inc.

While the passage of this bill in the state senate is exciting news, there is still much work to be done, if we are going to get the bill passed in the Alabama House. This vehicle carry bill is stuck in committee right now, and so we need a myriad of calls to help get the bill moving.

According to BamaCarry, “The legislative session only has a few days left. If we don’t put pressure on these representatives to take up the bill, the clock will run out on this opportunity to advance gun rights in the State of Alabama.”

ACTION: Please contact the Chair of the Homeland Security and Public Safety Committee, as well as the other committee members. Urge them to get this bill placed on the calendar and passed. The committee is scheduled to meet at 12 on Tuesday.

Some books -- Whittaker Chamber's Witness, for example, or Orwell's Homage to Catalonia -- were unforgettable. Others, especially those that I could not locate at the time, never got read, so I had no memory at all in order to reconstruct. I did have a wisp of a memory about a book that had, I thought, the words "rebel colonel" in the title, but was marked down in Richter's precise handwriting as "American political economy." Imagine my surprise, then, when at the thrift store the other day I encountered, complete with autographed, pristine dust jacket, a first edition copy of The Rebellious Colonel Speaks: Selected Papers of Willard F. Rockwell (McGraw Hill, 1964).

This is it! I thought. This is the book. And for the princely sum of ninety-eight cents plus tax, I walked away with it. Rockwell's biography is as obscure as his book. He was quite an amazing self-made man -- soldier, engineer, inventor, highly successful venture capitalist and social critic in a time when no one wanted to hear him. LTC Al Rockwell's biography, such as it is available on the Internet, can be found here.

Here are some quotes from this remarkable book, which consists mostly of the transcripts of speeches and article that Rockwell gave over the years:

The powers of the Federal Government have increased to a point which endangers our civil liberties, destroys the dignity on man, and is actually checking the industrial advances which have made this country the greatest industrial nation in the world, with the highest standard of living. . . Industry, and industry alone, has brought about these improvements in the last half-century, if you recognize industry as the work of all producers, and if you recognize their opponents as all politicians and any others who consume more than they produce.

And that was from a speech Rockwell gave in Pittsburgh on 24 February NINETEEN FORTY-SEVEN aboutr the federal bureaucracy entitled "See How They Bungle."

Another:

Fundamental changes in the Constitution have been effected so gradually and so cleverly that the present generation of citizens seldom realize what they have lost. We gave up amny freedoms in exchange for promises of security.

From an address entitled "The American Heritage" given to the Mississippi Manufacturer's Association in 1954:

In my opinion, the enormous and unprecedented growth of industry in this country has been possible because Thomas Jefferson was the greatest statesman who ever lived, and we had the benefit of his wisdom in the writing of our Constitution and the great Bill of Rights. There is a distinction between a statesman and a politician, and every country's future depends upon its statesmen. A politician is only selfishly interested in his own personal success in the next election, while a statesman is most interested in the welfare of the next generations. . .

Our thriving new young country has had only three great advantages: first, the freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which, you should be reminded, contains no guarantee whatever that happiness will be furnished at the expense of other citizens. Under that form of government, the wealth of our people increased through individual enterprise until our people had the second great advantage: mass buying power. Then our workers of all classes devised and promoted the mass-production methods which have made us the most powerful nation. These three advantages are available to all other nations, and only they, themselves, can secure them.

Without attempting to discuss aspects of the socialistic and capitalistic systems or making any comparisons of their merits, I would like to point out that most of the people in the Western hemisphere and Western Europe belong to religious faiths which endorse the Ten Commandments. To paraphrase just one of these Ten Commandments, there is the admonition that "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's property." If that Commandment were honored by its observance, there would be no more wars among civilized nations, and there would be no socialism in any civilized, God-fearing nation. Socialism is a form of religion with no other God than the green-eyed monster of envy.

Socialism is born of the envious desire to take over a neighbor's possessions without payment. When that envy is provoked among enough citizens to create laws which confiscate part of any neighbor's increase in income or property, that community or that state has adopted Socialism. When it operates through forceful confiscation of property by the state, it is called Communism, which is a difference without a distinction. Red Russia's leaders have only promised a communistic paradise after they have eliminated all opposition and conditioned the survivors to government regimentation. They have only demonstrated that human nature is so constituted that Communism must be imposed by dictatorship and cannot be sustained without a ruthless suppression against deviation as soon as it is detected. After more than a generation of practice, the Russian dictators continue to find deviationists in the ruling ranks who are promptly killed off, while mil;lions of objectors in the lower ranks have been condemned to death or to slave-labor camps, working under conditions guaranteed to repress their resistance and shorten their earthly existence.

The ridiculous desire to secure social security for the people by government fiat has almost throttled private initiative, enterprise, and thrift in several European countries. The taxes required by the government to support socialistic schemes are always imposed on all producers, with the highest rates applied to the highest producers. The inevitable result is that the high penalty on high producers brings about a great decline in the nation's production of wealth and everything that contributes to wealth, which is accelerated by the continuous increase in the demands for greater benefits for non-producers. Eventually, the once industrious nation becomes a nation of slackers by the simple process of pilfering from producers to supply support all who cannot, or will not work.

Socialism surely does promote the political welfare of political shysters and demagogues, and the politician who promises the most unearned rewards receives the most votes; and, after succeeding to office, he must wring more taxes out of the rapidly shrinking group of producers to pay off his political debts.

Our country cannot hope to maintain its former rate of progress until it finds its way out of the dead-end street marked "Socialism" and resumes its path on the broad highway of Constitutional government. That should be the first desire of every disciple of Thomas Jefferson.

I will try to have a book review of this remarkable volume when I have finished it.

The coward’s fear of death stems in large part from his incapacity to love anything but his own body. The inability to participate in others’ lives stands in the way of his developing any inner resources sufficient to overcome the terror of death. -- J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors.

We the people have only two ways to deal with each other: reason or force. If you want me to do something for you, the choice is by reason of argument or by threat of force, said New Hampshire-based writer Marko Kloos. Our proclaimed defiance of Connecticut's gun laws is not founded in contempt for the law, rather a love of justice and stability of law. Is a system of law which has been manipulated through emotional decision-making stable or just?

Those in government who choose to rule by fiat instead of by representing us have a choice to make: This choice is reason or force. The line is drawn and the people will no longer allow further encroachment of our natural rights. An armed society is a polite society. As long as the people remain armed, government knows that it cannot rule over the people by force. Those who stand in defiance of unconstitutional laws do so out of duty, honor, oath and love of country.

The comments make interesting, if predictable, reading. God bless john Cinque and all others like him now living behind enemy lines.

Sunday, March 30, 2014

For those of you who have been asking, it seems that Bill Mauldin's cartoon above is the only alternative that makes sense for the clothes washer, which is now an ex-washer, incapable of being repaired. Great timing. My oldest daughter, who seems to have but one set of work clothes that requires laundering every night, took the news particularly hard. I think she expected me to have a laying-on of hands to miraculously resurrect it. It has however, like Month Python's dead parrot, shuffled off the mortal coil. Since Rosey will need a reliable one while I'm in the Kentucky-Ohio-Indiana-Michigan area of operations for a month, I'll probably go down to the power company tomorrow and get a new one delivered on the installment plan.

Pruitt said then-governor Kathleen Sebelius and then-Kansas adjutant general Tod Bunting were instrumental in getting the mock city up and running as a way to boost the state’s ability to respond to disasters, emergencies or threats of terrorism.

The training facility is about a three hour drive west of Kansas City and sits on 45 acres of land owned by the Air Force, with an expansion to 155 acres now underway. It is under the jurisdiction of the Kansas Adjutant General’s Department and operated by the Kansas Division of Emergency Management.

Crisis City serves military and civilian personnel across Kansas as well as other states, including Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, North and South Dakota, Texas and Louisiana. Among those who have trained at the center are the Army, FBI, Secret Service and various state public safety agencies — even K-9 units.

The prisoner of war had been tortured for 10 months and beaten repeatedly by his North Vietnamese captors in recent days, and there were threats of more if he did not respond properly when the propaganda broadcast began. Haggard but gritty, Cmdr. Jeremiah A. Denton Jr. slumped in a chair before the television cameras.

Pretending to be blinded by the spotlights, he began blinking — seemingly random spasms and tics. He answered interrogators’ questions with a trace of defiance, knowing he would be beaten again and again, but hoping that America would detect his secret message in Morse code.

To a question about American “war atrocities,” the captured pilot said: “I don’t know what is happening in Vietnam because the only news sources I have are North Vietnamese. But whatever the position of my government is, I believe in it, I support it, and I will support it as long as I live.”

The North Vietnamese, who lost face, were even more outraged when they learned that Commander Denton, in the Japanese-taped interview broadcast on American television on May 17, 1966, had blinked out “T-O-R-T-U-R-E.” It was the first confirmation that American prisoners of war were being subjected to atrocities during the Vietnam War.

I leave out the litany of minor pains and frustrations that led to my tackling the principal task of the day, which is working on the leaking clothes washer in preparation for my trip to Knob Creek KY, Ohio and points beyond in April. Not only can't I figure out where the leak is coming from, it seems to continue when the water is turned off. No sooner did I figure out what it was that couldn't be figured out when the damn thing fell over on me. I gave up, came back to the computer for a rousing chorus of "It's a Great Day to Whup Somebody's Ass."

Not that I'm in any shape to whup anybody's ass. Besides, I wouldn't know who to whup.

So, having accomplished nothing in particular but waste time, I'm going upstairs to skype with Matthew and family in Germany. That certainly should improve my day. I'll have more later.

Mattiello has appointed Representative Cale Keable, a lawyer from Burrillville to chair the House Judiciary Committee and in a bipartisan move he appointed Representative Doreen Costa, a Republican representing Exeter and North Kingstown, to be the vice chair.

Costa has been a long time supporter of gun owner's rights, hosting Second Amendment rallies at the State House every time she feels that Second Amendment rights are being challenged by legislation.

Keable, who lives in Northern Rhode Island, which is chock full of sportsmen's clubs is also carries an A rank by the NRA. Between Costa, Keable, and Mattiello, it is unlikely that any anti-gun legislation will make it to a full floor vote, let alone pass through the House entirely.

This is a real change from former chair Edith Ajello who was ranked an F- by the NRA and the former Speaker, Gordon Fox, who carried a C ranking from the NRA.

Of course gun control supporters will continue to press for their legislation but at least for now it has no chance to make it through committee.

A lot of people are pointing fingers at Costa saying that in order to grab this appointment she must have struck a deal with the Democrats. Costa denies the claim. This appointment could just be Mattiello's way of publicly showing that he wants to work across party lines. While it is exciting to Republicans to have a Representative in a leadership position, she is still not the chairman of the committee, who holds the real power. She is the vice chairman. Her job is to preside over the committee if the chairman happens to be absent.

In addition, it is unlikely a deal was struck because Mattiello would really have nothing to gain from this aside from looking "bipartisan." He could have assured the Speaker position without Republican support and the Republicans did not have much of a choice. They could have voted for Mattiello or voted for a more progressive agenda with Rep. Marcello and his team. The other option would have been to abstain.

It's not surprising that some think a deal was struck because it is rare for a Democrat to give a member of the tiny Republican caucus a title.

But perhaps the two Representatives were just friendly in the General Assembly and as a pro-gun guy Mattiello trusts Costa to be a vice chair on the Judiciary Committee or maybe this is Mattiello's way of showing that he plans to be a different kind of leader than the previous House Speakers. Only time will tell.

All eyes will remain on Mattiello as he continues to put his leadership team in place and make his first moves as the new Speaker of the House. So far there has been a few surprises and there are probably more to come.

Reader Dale who forwards this link comments: "This story has it all. The contempt for truth, the exploitation of rumor. The contempt for private property. The contempt for life. I give this one the 2014 Modern America Award."

It occurred to me that the Yee case in California was similar to the mid 90s
anime "Gunsmith Cats". In that one the boss behind the gun smuggling gang the heroines were up against was an anti-gun politician aided by a corrupt high
ranking ATF official (but I repeat myself).

From the blurb:

Rally Vincent and Minnie May Hopkins are just a pair of gun shop owners who do a bit of bounty hunting to make ends meet when a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms agent comes to them. Using the threat of arresting them for their lack of a retail license for their merchandise and the resulting unpaid taxes, he forces them to agree to cooperate in a sting to break a gun running ring. They have an initial success, but that brings new problems as the ring's leader brings in a merciless assassin to eliminate these new enemies. It will take all their skill, allies and some luck to come out this crisis alive.

By means of my wound care doc (who is not on spring break like the rest), I found out yesterday that Monday's test results do not indicate any mass, tumor or thickening of tissue in my kidneys or bladder. That's the good news. Logic would then dictate that the elevated creatinine has to do with my medication (either the Gleevec or the Lasix). I have stopped taking both until I can get the oncologist and the new nephrologist together on the same page sometime next week (after spring break).

Until then, I struggle on with the health issues. (There is no doubt that the elevated creatinine is getting me down, I can feel the difference and can't get done the things I normally do. For example, I overslept today big time, yet do not feel rested.) Then there is the work load, which is not going away.

I would like to draw your attention to the exchange of comments on this post, where I explain my thinking on why I decided not to use reloads in the smuggling campaign. I probably should have made a separate post about it, but that takes more effort that frankly I don't have.

In any case, I'm getting on with the work as best I can. Keep me in your prayers, please. This is spiritual warfare as much as anything.

A prominent California lawmaker was arrested on Wednesday in an FBI sweep that netted 26 people, a high-profile case that could affect statewide elections and brings to three the number of Democratic state senators who face criminal charges this year. Senator Leland Yee, a former San Francisco supervisor and one-time mayoral candidate, was criminally charged in federal court in San Francisco with two felony counts of conspiring to import and traffic in firearms, and six corruption counts.

In 2006, Yee was named to the Gun Violence Prevention Honor Roll by the Brady Campaign for his efforts that included co-authoring a first-in-the-nation bill to require new semiautomatic handguns be equipped with ballistics identification technology known as micro-stamping.

The Wo Hop To is a Triad group based in Wanchai, Hong Kong. The name translates to "Harmoniously United Association" or "Harmonious Union Plan" and is thought to have been founded in 1908 in Sai Ying Pun as a secret political organization in opposition to the Qing Dynasty. They are one of the "Four Major Gangs" of Hong Kong, the others being Wo Shing Wo, 14K and Sun Yee On.

During the early 1990s, Wo Hop To expanded into the United States, beginning in San Francisco, California. The US Wo Hop To was led by Peter Chong (also known as "Uncle Chong") and Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow a former Hop Sing Boys gang member. The Wo Hop To had plans to control all the Asian gangs in San Francisco and, from there, to branch out into drug distribution nationwide. Wo Hop To chased the Wah Ching gang out of the Bay Area and the Wah Ching headed to Southern California. The Wah Ching was the only surviving Chinatown gang during the 1980s. The Hop Sing Boys and Joe Boys were dismantled by police after the "Golden Dragon massacre". The Wo Hop To had taken over Chinatown after killing the Wah Ching leader Danny Wong.

In the afternoon on Wednesday, Judge Morin shook the plastic shell and tried to listen to something inside. He said he could not hear any gunpowder. He then asked the lawyers to open the shell to see if there was powder inside.

(This seemed like a bizarre request since the lack of primer — not gunpowder — would be relevant to the interoperability of the misfired shell.)

Assistant Attorney General Peter Saba said that the government wanted to open the shell but that, “It is dangerous to do outside a lab.”

(NOTE: The hysterical laughter you hear in the distance is mine. What ignorant weenies.)

The prosecutors and police officers left the courtroom to try to find a lab that was open in the afternoon to bring the judge to cut the plastic off the section that holds the pellets. When that proved not possible in the same day, the judge decided to just rule on the bullets.

The 25 conical-shaped, .45 caliber bullets, made by Knight out of lead and copper, sat on the judge’s desk. They do not have primer or gunpowder so cannot be propelled. The matching .50 caliber plastic sabots were also in the box.

There was much debate over whether the bullets were legal since D.C. residents are allowed to buy antique replica firearms without registering.

The judge seemed inclined to throw out this charge since he repeatedly asked how the bullets could be illegal if the gun that they go in was not.

During lunch, the government came up with a list from ATF of types of muzzleloader rifles that could be converted to use rimfire ammunition. Not that Mr. Witaschek owned one of these nor was modern ammo at issue in the trial.

Nevertheless Judge Morin said, “I’m persuaded these are bullets. They look like bullets. They are hollow point. They are not musket balls.” He then ruled that Mr. Witaschek had possessed “beyond a reasonable doubt” the metal pieces in D.C.

A reader who reported this to me in an email early this morning commented:

It's in. Judge ruled that muzzleloader sabots were bullets and that he had to
register as a firearms offender. He did not rule at all on the shotgun shell.

Do you have a smuggling program into DC? Since components are just as illegal as
as real loaded rounds, I propose sending expended, berdan primed, steel .223
casings to a long list of tyrants in DC.

Might even be able to get these through for the cost of a stamp.

You know, this is an excellent idea. I've always wondered if there was some use for those steel-cased, berdan-primed, scrap-value-less-than-the-cost-of-bending-over-to-pick-them-up Russian marvels. Now there is.

LATER: And here's another one. Some disinformation firebug has started a prairie fire, the stupid (or deliberately crafty) bastard. Of course the beauty of this from the disinformation artist's point-of-view is that we don't have the resources or time (at least I sure as hell don't) to debunk each and every one of these as they appear and they get picked up faster than ebola.

It occurred to me that I can save money by reloading the .38s and then we can send them right back to the state of their origin -- behind enemy lines in Tyrant Malloy's Connecticut (also known as King Dannell, the Clueless). It is both sweet and fitting, and stretches the resources a bit.

Almost immediately I received cautions from a several folks. Here is one:

I think the law says if you reload ammunition for your own use, that's OK. But that it is not OK to reload it and then sell it to somebody, without some kind of a manufacturing license . . . Does that manufacturing license requirement also apply to someone who reloads ammunition and then gives it away, as well? Is that something that would bring ATF comeuppances down the road?

So I checked with some legal beagles, and it seems that the answer is that it well could. Heretofore all the ammunition we have reloaded has been for the personal use of my friends and I. I do not wish to open them up to the same kinds of risks I already run by giving the evil sonsabitches at the ATF a hammer with which to beat my friends over the head with. That is their modus operandi, you know, to get at me by the cowardly means of attacking people whose only sin is to know me.

Therefore, I won't be using any of my own resources (or my friends) to reload ammunition for the smuggling campaign.

Excellent presentation. "Members of the US Army Reserve Shooting Team were asked to conduct a Squad Designated Marksman class on the M14EBR-RI Enhanced Battle Rifle for 82nd Airborne Division, 2nd BN, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment. Marksmanship fundamentals for the Designated Marksman taught by SSG John Arcularius of the US Army Reserve Shooting Team."

The article is headlined: "Gunmaker says sales ease to 'realistic' levels." Well, just wait until the civil war breaks out in Connecticut boys. You won't have any problems with demand -- except filling it.

Referring to the crowd that filled the main rotunda under the dome of the Rhode Island State House to advocate for sensible gun control, State Senator Josh Miller said, “This is what a majority looks like… A majority is a wide coalition…” that voted “in Exeter over two to one in favor of people who favor gun legislation.”

He's home, still in a lot of pain and thanks you for all your prayers and good wishes. Don't expect anything from him for at least a couple of days, though. He also asked me to repeat his polite request from the other day, referring to emails and comments: "Please leave me the hell alone, okay?" I'd say he's still sore as a boil and with good reason. Keep him in your prayers. We need him.

A reader asked if I had anything to do with this video, seeing as how it uses some of my words and my list of Connecticut tyrants. I did not. However, it comes as no particular surprise. This is a video generation.

I walked beside many Three Percenters at the Hartford rally, before and after my speech. You know the gratifying thing? Few of those who carried Threeper flags or who sported Three Percenter patches and tabs on their uniforms knew who I was. THAT is the success of an open source insurgency idea. It is a testament to the greatness of an idea that it is larger and more powerful than the originator. In the end, they will be able to say, "We did it ourselves."

Gentle readers and Three Percenters, we have succeeded, you and I, in weaponizing an idea. This idea cannot be killed. It can be misinterpreted, profaned and discredited by those who pretend to claim it for their own reasons however sordid, which is why I am so jealous of the brand. But the essence of it cannot be killed. It will go on and on. This is something that the tyrants in Connecticut and elsewhere should consider before it is too late.

Sunday, March 23, 2014

I have been asked how it is that we get banned material behind enemy lines in the Northeast. There is no particular secret as to the porousness of the borders of these five states, CT, MD, NJ, NY & now RI. A glance at the map will tell you that all are vulnerable to seaborne smuggling, as the prohibitionists of the 20s found out the hard way. Overland, eastern Pennsylvania makes a perfect staging area for private vehicle shipments, as does VT and NH. UPS, FedEx and the USPS all still function quite well for direct shipments to volunteers behind enemy lines to and from blind addresses. Mostly this involves friend to friend transfers, arranged surreptitiously face to face and almost impossible to trace. The purpose of the smuggling is two-fold. First, to demonstrate the absolute powerlessness of the forces of state violence to actually enforce an unenforceable law without roadblocks and extremely intrusive methods which will alienate their own population (i.e registered voters). And second, to goad them into taking those measures which will demonstrate their fundamental unAmerican, Gestapo tactics to their political loss. They painted themselves into this corner. Let's see them get out of it. We have only to "Defy. Resist. Evade. Smuggle."

It has been impossible for me to keep up with all the emails and snail mails I've been getting, and I've been falling behind on even my thank you notes for subscriber donations. My apologies and I will try to get caught up on that at least. One recent arrival stands out, though. We continue to prepare for a big smuggling event into CT later this spring/summer, to include more ammunition. So it was well-timed that I received a box of 1,660 pieces of .38 brass from Charles in CT and a significant contribution to assist in the smuggling campaign. It occurred to me that I can save money by reloading the .38s and then we can send them right back to the state of their origin -- behind enemy lines in Tyrant Malloy's Connecticut (also known as King Dannell, the Clueless). It is both sweet and fitting, and stretches the resources a bit. So to Charles I am awarding the honorific of Smuggler Logistician, First Class. Look for it in the mail, Charles. I'll try to get it out along with the other mail that's piled up by Tuesday.

Went to the oncologist's on Friday and my creatinine levels are still elevated. Ought to be (and once was) around 1. Now it is exceeding 2.5. Going in for a kidney ultrasound on early Monday and am being referred to a nephrologist. If it ain't one thing, it's another. Keep me in your prayers.

DEHUMANIZATION: One group denies the humanity of the other group. Members of it are equated with animals, vermin, insects or diseases. Dehumanization overcomes the normal human revulsion against murder.

Of course, you could ask Streicher how that "parasite" thing worked out for him, but you'd have to go to hell to have that conversation.

Julius Streicher, after dancing frantically to the tune of the executioner's jig at Nuremberg, 1946.

Italian authorities were indignant when they discovered that the Illinois weapons maker ArmaLite had an advertising campaign showing Michelangelo’s David holding one of its rifles. “The advertisement image of an armed David offends and violates the law,” tweeted tourism minister Dario Franceschini. Angel Tartuferi, director of the Accademia Gallery, which houses the sculpture, agreed: “The law says that the aesthetic value of the work cannot be altered."

Alabama residents no longer need a conceal-carry permit to transport an unloaded gun that is out of the driver’s reach in a vehicle, thanks to controversial legislation passed last year; however, the Senate this week has passed a bill that aims to change that restriction.

Sponsored by Sen. Scott Beason, R-Gardendale, and co-sponsored by Sen. Jimmy Holley, R-Elba, SB 354 passed the upper house Wednesday night. The bill, which now goes to the Alabama House of Representatives, would allow loaded handguns to be transported in vehicles without a conceal-carry permit.

The bill is expected to draw fire from detractors who say Alabama’s law is already too unrestrictive, and Covington County Sheriff Dennis Meeks agrees.

“This legislation is the most dangerous thing I’ve ever seen done,” Meeks said Thursday. “I can’t believe a legislator would be so naïve as to think that everyone who drives around with a loaded gun is a pillar of the community.”

With sheriff’s departments statewide tasked with issuing conceal-carry permits, the loss in revenue the bill’s change could bring has been a point of contention, but Meeks says the money is the least of his worries.

And you have still done more damage to the cause of liberty than he has. My only question is this: Are you a federal agent? Or are you too stupid to understand that you help them more than us? You present no solutions and create many problems. You have spent your coin of influence Mike; No one with a brain thinks that you are helping. In fact many of us now believe your blog is a PSYOP. Its time for you to Go away. Spend your last days with your family. Your influence with the FREEFOR is for the most part ended.

From the text and the reference to "FREEFOR" I'd guess that this is another of Kerodin's acolytes. Anonymous asks if I am a federal agent, channeling Alex Jones no doubt, who has never publicly retracted his 2010 allegation even after I confronted him at the Alamo, securing a promise that would. Of course if you talk to the neo-Nazis, they're just as certain that I am an agent of the Southern Poverty Law Center, the ADL and the Mossad. If you talk to Walter Reddy and the LaRouchies, I am an agent of British secret service (I forget whether it's MI-5 or MI-6, you'll have to ask Walter about that). Of course the late and largely unlamented William Cooper called me "John Doe #5". (If you followed his career that was somewhat after he claimed to have been an agent of ONI and to have shot it out with space aliens and somewhat before he killed a local deputy and was himself shot in return.) But it IS nice to know that my "influence with the FREEFOR is for the most part ended." Now, if someone will just inform the authorities of the states of CO, CT, MD, NJ, NY and RI as well as the Holder DOJ, we can all go about our business, I guess.

David collapsed in the middle of the night last night and fractured two ribs and also put couple of lumps on his head. He is (in the hospital).

They are taking tests, and will keep him for a couple of days.

Maureen

David has been struggling with pneumonia but was getting better. This is a real setback and so keep him and his family in your prayers.

LATER: Spoke briefly with David who, in great pain (think pneumonic coughing with two broken ribs), confirms the above and asks politely, "Tell everyone to leave me the hell alone, okay?" I don't think that request prevents prayers offered in his behalf.

Today is the anniversary of the opening of the concentration camp at Dachau.

I finished not long ago (as part of my insomniac reading) an inter-library loan copy of Bruno Heilig's memoir Men Crucified. Ghastly stuff. Heilig was lucky. Relatives bought his way out of the camp -- and Germany -- early, before the Final Solution clamped down and he survived to write about it from Britain.

Well this is the second time he has said they need to see what the Supreme Court decides before pushing their law both in the first letter and now.

So what happens if the Supreme Court says it is legal then what does he do, does he shuffle his feet on the ground like a 6 year old and say gash darn sorry boys turn in your guns.

Please do not get me wrong I agree with him very much but I have seen the Supreme Court make many wrong decisions through history and this could be one of them. They sometimes add to much feeling in their decisions and not base their decision on the constitution and why and how it was formed.

Two points.

First, my proposal to put off enforcement until the Supremes rule on these various intolerable acts is more likely to be acted upon (either openly or covertly) by the forces of state violence than a demand to repeal the law. It also positions us as more reasonable in the court of public opinion and uses their own supposed "legal" forms against them, exposing their hypocrisy. And that is a modest win. We look moderate and compromising, they look, well, like the grasping totalitarians that they are. Do I have faith in the current roster of Supremes? Of course not. Not before or after Heller. But that is not the most important point, which is:

Second, like the pursuit of the truth in Fast and Furious I am trying to buy time for our side to get ready. Time to organize, politically and militarily. Time for training. Time for logistics. Time for planning in 4GW in your own AO. Time. Time for more firearms to be purchased. Time for more ammunition to be laid back. Time. Time that we will desperately need if the Supremes eventually do uphold these intolerable acts, when of course, we will have to fight. Time.

My thanks to JM for this list, who writes: "One great irony is I found this info from some leftist environmentalist website - they were finally good for something! This website has all of the names and numbers for each rep, too. http://www.njenvironment.org/politiciansstate.htm

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Since I had no email list ready to go like Connecticut, I would be grateful is you Threepers in NJ and RI would send it on as best you can in hard-copy form, if nothing else. I continue to work on the raw data of the RI list, but I am still struggling health-wise, so any assistance would be appreciated.

To the legislators of the states of New Jersey and Rhode Island, upon the approach of your votes for firearm confiscation:

The firearm owners of your respective states tell me that you are busy men and women with short attention spans so I will try to make this brief, beginning with an instructive story from the history of my adopted state, Alabama. Some still tell it with pride in the hills of north Alabama. Like all the best stories, it has the advantage of being true.

In 1863, eight duly sworn and appointed law officers of the state government, acting with the authority of their nation's congress, executed a search of the homestead of one Henry Brooks. They were there searching for Brooks' son who was evading the draft and to execute the tax-in-kind law, which stated that everyone, no matter how poor, had to support the national government, even if that meant having half their crop and farm animals stolen for government purposes. At the homestead were Brooks, his wife Jenny and their eight children. The oldest son was just 17 and was hiding in the barn. The youngest was suckling at his mother's breast. The men disarmed the Brooks at gunpoint and commenced their work. In order to find out where the eldest son was, the Confederate Home Guard posse put a rope around Henry's neck, threw it over a limb of the tree in their front yard and slowly raised and lowered him, torturing him for the whereabouts of his son as the entire family was forced to watch.

Shortly, the oldest boy could take no more and charged the men in a hopeless sally from the barn. He was shot to death. Henry Brooks, still hanging from the rope and strangling to death, was shot as well. The lawful and duly sworn search party then rode away. They were laughing as they left.

Had they understood who they were messing with, they wouldn't have been laughing. Jenny lowered her husband's body from the tree, laid it out beside that of her oldest son, and had all of her sons place their hands in the blood on their daddy's chest (or, in the case of the baby, she placed it there herself). She then had them swear a blood oath that they would not rest until all eight men were dead. This began a feud that lasted forty years, the last shots of which were fired in McCurtain County, Oklahoma in 1904. By that time seven of the eight "law officers" were dead, as well as no less than twenty-four others who got in the way of the Brooks' and their quarry. (The eighth disappeared, leaving his family and all his property behind, apparently changed his name and was never seen in these parts again.)

What does this have to do with you? Well, I'm getting to that. Stick with me here.

Jenny, a full-blooded Cherokee girl whose family had avoided the Trail of Tears by hiding up in the mountains, loved her dead husband. She demonstrated the depth of that love by ambushing the leader of the lawful posse a couple months later, shooting him off his horse as he rode out alone from his own home. She then dragged his body into the woods, cut the "lawman's" head clean off, put it in a tote sack, took it home and put it in the lye boiling pot, cooking it until all that was left was the man's skull, minus the jawbone. She then turned it upside down, put it on the sideboard and used it as a soap dish the rest of her life, right up until the day she died many, many years later.

Of course, Jenny lost all of her boys but one and several sons-in-law in the forty year feud, but she counted that as a part of life. In later years she would relate how proud she was of her boys "dyin' with their boots on" and how she had taught them all to shoot straight.

Again you will be asking impatiently, "What does this have to do with me?" Just this. The eight duly sworn and appointed law officers didn't understand, nor did they care to understand, just exactly who it was that they were messing with. They were "the law" and "the law" had to be obeyed. What they didn't understand in the arrogance of their ignorance was that they too were in violation of a law -- the ironclad and non-repealable Law of Unintended Consequences. This is a mistake that you too -- at this moment in history -- are on the cusp of making.

Like the senate and legislature of Connecticut, you are about to pass more onerous laws robbing heretofore law-abiding firearm owners of their God-given, inalienable and natural rights to liberty, property and life -- rights that the United States Constitution merely codifies. These rights do not come from the Constitution, and they certainly do not come from you by your permission. They are not subject to majority vote. They just ARE. The Connecticut authorities are discovering to their chagrin that fully 85% of the firearm owners that their draconian law was aimed at ARE REFUSING TO COMPLY. More than a few have made up their minds to resist any confiscation -- law or no law -- even if that means defending themselves from state violence at the point of their rifles. As I pointed out in a speech on the steps of the Connecticut capitol last April, when democracy turns to tyranny, the armed citizenry still gets to vote. (1)

You see, like those eight duly sworn and appointed law officers, you mistake the people you seek to victimize. Yes, they have put up with previous restrictions you have passed. They backed up, grumbling, but they backed up. However, many of these folks, with a huge sense of grievance brought about by decades of being pushed back from the free exercise of their traditional liberties by the likes of you, are ready to themselves push back. The thing is, Connecticut has now ventured into this undiscovered country as blithely as uncomprehending deaf and blind folks tap dancing in a mine field. For as I tried to explain to them, they (and you) live in a different century than Jenny Brooks. Had Jenny understood the principles of 4th Generation Warfare, she would have sent her boys to kill the Confederate Governor of the state of Alabama and his political minions -- not to mention the Confederate congressmen who passed the despotic laws and the newspaper editors who endorsed them. For 4th Generation Warfare understands that the way to defeat an enemy is to directly engage the war makers and decision takers. Win the war there, and the raid parties stop coming. (2) This is the reality of war in the 21st Century -- this is the reality of the civil war you risk by pushing people you barely understand who have decided in their own minds that they will be pushed no longer.

Ask yourself, if Connecticut has an 85% non-compliance rate, what will the rate be in New Jersey? In Rhode Island? Do you think that your fellow citizens are more meek that Connecticut's? Are they more willing to have their rights torn away just because you say so? I doubt it. In case you hadn't noticed, civil wars -- such as you now propose to ignite -- haven't gotten any more civilized since Jenny Brooks' century. Indeed, they have grown more savage. And here you are, like the Confederate Congress, about to pass laws that will bring parties of armed men ready to dole out state-sponsored violence in furtherance of your tyrannical appetites to the doors of people who already feel disenfranchised, marginalized, mocked and scorned. Do you seriously think that after the first folks are killed in the name of your "benevolent intentions" that your victims won't come looking for you? Do you think that -- after you have killed their kith and kin -- you are immune from such people making a soap dish out of your skull just because you were elected by the constituents of your district and that the "law" was passed according to democratic forms? Do you imagine that there is a green zone within which you could hide from the future Jenny Brooks that your tyranny will have made?

It is an established principle of American jurisprudence that an unconstitutional law is null and void. Connecticut has passed such a law and is apparently intent upon rushing it into action before the Supreme Court can rule upon upon it. I have urged them to suspend enforcement until that time. (3) They have ignored me. The fact that I can later say that I tried to warn them to prevent civil war will be cold comfort. But don't you think that it would be the better part of valor for your respective states to at least wait to see if Connecticut ends up killing people under a law that was later ruled to be null and void by the Supremes?

I really would like to avoid another civil war in this country. I hope you agree with me. Do not extrapolate from your own cowardice and think for one moment that these people who you scarcely understand and secretly despise would be willing to merely roll over at the first threat of state-sponsored violence as you would. There remain in this country people who are willing to die for their principles. Such people are most often willing to kill in righteous self-defense of those principles as well. American history demonstrates that it is best not to push such people too far, lest they push back, fully and in kind.

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

On the efficacy of passive resistance in the face of the collectivist beast. . .

Had the Japanese got as far as India, Gandhi's theories of "passive resistance" would have floated down the Ganges River with his bayoneted, beheaded carcass. -- Mike Vanderboegh.

In the future . . .

When the histories are written, “National Rifle Association” will be cross-referenced with “Judenrat.” -- Mike Vanderboegh to Sebastian at "Snowflakes in Hell"

"Smash the bloody mirror."

If you find yourself through the looking glass, where the verities of the world you knew and loved no longer apply, there is only one thing to do. Knock the Red Queen on her ass, turn around, and smash the bloody mirror. -- Mike Vanderboegh

From Kurt Hoffman over at Armed and Safe.

"I believe that being despised by the despicable is as good as being admired by the admirable."

From long experience myself, I can only say, "You betcha."

"Only cowards dare cringe."

The fears of man are many. He fears the shadow of death and the closed doors of the future. He is afraid for his friends and for his sons and of the specter of tomorrow. All his life's journey he walks in the lonely corridors of his controlled fears, if he is a man. For only fools will strut, and only cowards dare cringe. -- James Warner Bellah, "Spanish Man's Grave" in Reveille, Curtis Publishing, 1947.

"We fight an enemy that never sleeps."

"As our enemies work bit by bit to deconstruct, we must work bit by bit to REconstruct. Be mindful where we should be. Set goals. We fight an enemy that never sleeps. We must learn to sleep less." -- Mike H. at What McAuliffe Said

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.